A.Word.A.Day

A.Word.A.Day--Rip Van Winkle

This week's theme: eponyms.

Rip Van Winkle (rip van WING-kuhl) noun

One who fails to keep up with the times.

[After Rip Van Winkle, a character in a story by Washington Irving
(1783-1859). Rip falls asleep for 20 years in the Catskill mountains
and wakes up to discover the world around him has changed. He finds
that the American Revolutionary war has taken place and instead of
being a subject of His Majesty George the Third, he is now a free
citizen of the United States.]

Rip Van Winkle has plenty of company when it comes to sleeping. His
20 years are nothing compared with Sleeping Beauty who dozed off for
100 years. The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus fell asleep in a cave for some
250 years, and Endymion in Greek mythology received the gift of eternal
youth by sleeping forever.

-Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org)

"Does Gordon Brown sincerely want to be Prime Minister? To ask
such a question you would have to be a Rip Van Winkle, slumbering
obliviously through every event in British politics throughout
the past decade."
Anatole Kaletsky; Unless Gordon Brown Wakes Soon, He'll Sleepwalk
Past the Door to Power; The Times (London, UK); Dec 7, 2006.

X-Bonus

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have
persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as
he is scared, and then he is gone. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and
34th president (1890-1969)